The Spearhead: “It isn’t really that the boys are performing poorly; it’s the schools that are lousy, and grades reflect little more than how teachers “feel” about their students.”

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1.
michael hoskins

For those of us in the Wonderful World of Work (otherwise known as real life) who have had to hire, evaluate performance and fire these kids (beginning about 30 yrs ago) it is blindingly obvious.
Sorry girls, you are not cutting it…and you are feminizing men into the same level of non-performance.
Now, before the firestorm…don’t bother with the few examples of high flyers, they will always exist and by comparison with normal folk prove the point. In the day to day world of high school and college grads… it ain’t happening.
Sorry
ta

One more data point confirming my suspicion about why boys are so much more likely than girls to go into STEM subjects in post-secondary education. You can’t discriminate in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). Well, you sorta kinda can, but not really. 2+2=4 whether you are a girl, boy, black, white, well-behaved, bratty or whatever. And likewise E=mC^2 (“^” means “to the power of”). Regardless of who or “what” you are.

But you can discriminate in other subjects. So, you don’t like robot stories, boy gets C. You do like friendship stories, girl gets A. Quality of stories are the same? No matter.

Girl is encouraged to write, boy is discouraged. Same with other non-stem classwork. Girl neglects her STEM homework because she is encouraged to do other things. Boy discovers the “only thing he can do” is STEM work. Girl gets better at things other than STEM. Boy gets better at STEM. Girl compares her work in STEM to other kids in class–boys are doing better, so she gets discouraged in STEM, likewise encouraged in other subjects. Boy compares his work to other kids, goes through the opposite process.

After 12 years, boy figures the only thing he can do is something in STEM. Girl “LOVES” anything but STEM and maybe can’t even do STEM at that level. This might be true even if they both started with the same raw capability.

So, boy goes into STEM–unless he is marvelously gifted or driven otherwise. Girl goes into something other than STEM–unless she is marvelously gifted or driven to something in STEM.

So, you get 55-60% female entering freshman classes overall, while you get 90% male participation in most STEM subjects. Not because of discrimination against girls in STEM, but because of discrimination against boys in non-STEM!

Unlike a lot of you, I’ve actually worked in education. I started out as a student teacher in the mid-80s, then a substitute teacher, then a full-time teacher, and later a professor.

I once sat in on a class with this female teacher. She was a lesbian, naturally. And she was telling all the girls to beome lawyers.

Inadvertently, I asked the logical question. Have you ever been to the Million Dollar Saloon in Dallas? See those cars parked in the parking lot, Porsches, Lambroginies, Mazaraties? The girls drive those cars. I know because I know their mechanic.

A girl can make a hell of a lot more money as a stripper than she can as a lawyer. And that’s a fact.

Of course, I caught a lot of grief from the administration for that comment, but I didn’t care; it was the truth.

A girl, she takes her clothes off for a living. She makes a whole lot of money, and then she leaves, moves to another town, and finds some chump to marry her. She’s very good at feigned affection, isn’t she.

As far as boys go, they were some of my best students. It’s like the difference between dogs and cats. Dogs understand English. You can train them, and they will obey. Cats, not so much.

Same with boys and girls. Boys will listen to instruction. Girls won’t; they feel like they’re entitled to do whatever they want.

More than 80% of teachers are women. But most of the administrators and principals are men. So the problem begins with them.

If you want to change education, begin with the curriculum. We should get back to grammar, punctuation and spelling, sentence diagraming. And vocational education.

Boys will respond to that. I did, because I didn’t have a choice.

Girls, not so much. She may dream of being a lawyer, but she will make more money as a stripper. And what exactly does that make her? Not marriage material.

You see how this whole sordid dream sorts out. Boys uneducated and untrained. Girls not worth the name their degrees are printed on.

You say, “More than 80% of teachers are women. But most of the administrators and principals are men.”

If only… That last statement is untrue in many school systems now, particularly out my way and also in other states where some of my relatives live. Most of the administrative staff at most schools in these states are women. Where did you think all those female teachers were going to go at promotion time? Yesterday’s teachers are today’s administrators, and the results are obvious, especially for boys.

Teachers and our education system are part of the problem, but I think that something else drives the issue. It is that parents do not value education and do not make their children apply themselves. The best teacher in the world is hamstrung by uninvolved parents.

And most of these uninvolved parents are single moms.

So there certainly is a gender component beyond how the schools have become toxic for boys, it is that there are so few dads involved to make the school correct the problem.

Micha, father only custody would be as large a problem as mother only custody.

I had to write WOULD, because father only custody is not a significant problem in the US. I am a father, I work with fathers, my best friends are fathers, and none of us are perfect or magical. I address the problem as it is, and there is copius research to back the claims up.

In fact, I would go so far as to say the schools and teachers are almost irrelevant compared to the toxic effect of the homes in city schools. Suburban are a little better. Money is an indicator not a cause of the discrepancy in performance. People who make money value education and self control.